Month: September 2017

The enrichment event that I attended was part of the Hillel at Baruch college. The Hillel at Baruch is a center for Jewish life at the college. Their goal is to enrich the lives of Jewish undergraduates. The Hillel is a large club and they have sub clubs that are part of it as well. Some of these clubs are Tamid, Wings, First Lex Capital, Emet, and many more. At the beginning of the event the leaders of the Hillel introduced the sub clubs stated above. Then the leaders of each of these sub clubs gave detailed descriptions about their club and why the the undergraduates should join them. In addition to all of the leaders of the sub clubs and the leaders of the Hillel talking they served food. Personally I thought the event was very knowledgeable. I have already joined the Hillel and plan to join some of the sub clubs as well.
The event above was mostly just an introduction event to get to know the Hillel and all its parts. There was another event that I attended which was also directed to Jewish undergraduates. At the event a professor at Baruch, who is also a prominent leader at the Hillel, gave a speech about his personal experience in the United States Army. To make a long story short, he had a life threatening experience which brought him closer to the Jewish religion. I assumed from his story that the goal of the speech was to bring more young individuals closer to the Jewish religion as well. Even though this was not the main reason I was attending this event, they also served good food.

The event I attended was a general interest meeting for Baruch’s yearbook organization. I decided to attend this event because I was a photographer, editor, and financial manager for my high school yearbook. My freshman orientation leader was also involved in yearbook so that was how I originally found out about it. I signed up to get information at the club fair on the day of convocation so when I got the email about the first meeting 2 weeks ago I made plans to attend.

At the meeting they had pizza. Also, the president talked about how the yearbook is the only student run business at Baruch. They create a product (the yearbook), market it and sell it too. After the general introduction by the president, the committee leaders each gave a brief intro about their committee. There are 5 committees. There is a photography committee which is in charge of taking photographs to put into the yearbook. From what I understand, this is the biggest committee. Also, there is a marketing committee which works to advertise the yearbook, especially as we get closer to the end of the year. The marketing committee work closely with the editing committee to make ads. The editing committee is in charge of making the actual spreads which fill each page in the yearbook and they also make any ads that the organization needs. I think that the committee is fairly small. There is also a finance committee. The people in this section are in charge of taking payments and creating cosponsorships and doing reimbursements for the clubs expenses as well as doing general financial reports. The final committee is sort of an administrative committee. This committee is run by a few members who are not technically yearbook members but instead a separate part? I didn’t really understand what that meant.

At the meeting, I was tempted to join many committees since I did practically everything in high school; I decided to join the photography committee to start off with.

I first heard about UCLA (United Chinese Language Association) when three girls holding the flyers for this club approached me as I was waiting in line for a smoothie at the Convocation Day Club Fair. Since high school, having chosen to take Mandarin Chinese as my foreign language, I have already carried with me a prime interest in Chinese culture. This club presented to me a great opportunity to continue learning about China. Through further online research, I also discovered that there is a bi-weekly Chinese Learning Program (CLP) where free Mandarin-learning courses will be held by the UCLA committee.

On Tuesday, I attended UCLA’s first club event, a lantern-making event. First, the committee put up a PowerPoint presentation where they spoke about the “Lady of the Moon”, the Chinese legend behind the annual upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival. I found it quite intriguing, especially how the UCLA member presented it with humorous excitement. The slides consisted of Chinese words here and there, as well. One word that really stuck with me was the Chinese word for dumpling, 饺子 (jiăozi), because I was terribly hungry at the moment. After the presentation, we were instructed on how to make two lanterns with construction paper. They were fairly easy to make, so I might’ve got carried away and stacked 5 or 6 lanterns with Juli to create the tallest lantern in the room.

Afterwards, we entered our lantern in for the competition. Ours, as expected, caught the attention of the judges, so we won 3rd place. We were prized with pocky sticks! Then, there was a lineup for food and refreshments for everyone. The committee went around introducing themselves, and then they made conversation with us, and the atmosphere just felt so friendly. Throughout this experience, I realized that I felt comfortable here, and I’d like to continue attending UCLA’s club events, and become an official member.

A few days ago, my roommate and I decided to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art (also known as the MET). Moving here from Greece, I had no idea what the Met was. As soon as i walked in, i was amazed. It is definitely the biggest museum I’ve ever been to. What I loved about the Metropolitan is the fact that it has no limits when it comes to art. Art there doesn’t stop in 1900, or 2016. It feels like a living process. Also, there are so many different types of art and you never know what you’ll come across. For instance, when me and my roommate paid at the entrance they gave us a map and we started walking around, admiring all the various types of art. I would never imagine i’d come across Greek and Egyptian art. In fact, Greek art was one of the first ones we saw. As we continued walking, we were amazed by the fact that we never knew what would appear in front of us. We could stroll from an Egyptian temple to an exhibit from the Renaissance or a Ancient Greek statue of Poseidon. Even though that made the museum’s layout a bit confusing, since we were walking in different directions, trying not to miss any sections, I really enjoyed my first visit at the Met and i can’t wait for many more to come. Last but not least, another thing i admired about this museum is that it was newly renovated and even though its one of the oldest museums, it was in a perfectly good condition. If I could change one thing about my first visit, I would try to spend 1 full day there, just because there are so many things and different exhibits to see. I would definitely recommend the Met as one of the most important destinations and must-sees of New York and I look forward to my next visit there.

The first club meeting I went to was the UCLA Club’s Paper Lantern making event. Before going to this meeting I did not know what UCLA stood for; because its also the abbreviation for a university in California. But I later found out the UCLA stands for United Chinese Language Association. The event itself was fun and all the members of this club were very friendly and welcoming. At first, they had a slideshow put together of pictures and activities done during the Chinese Lantern event. Their slideshow was really well put together and they even put in some Chinese translations as well as the word written in both Chinese and English, which was super helpful.

Besides they slideshow, they also taught us a quick and easy way to make a paper lantern. They did a live demonstration as well as played a how to video in the background. Both the video and the live demonstration of this were throughouly explained and simple to follow. After everybody made their lanterns they judged them and picked out winners who then won prizes of Chinese snacks. I was not one of the winners of the foreign snacks. Overall, it was a fun event and really nicely put together.

Even though the event was different and intriguing, I don’t think the United Chinese Language Association is the club for me. I never really had an interest in learning Chinese mostly because other languages have taken priority for me personally. Although the Chinese culture is very unique and cool to learn about, the same goes with other cultures for me to take a higher interest in. I think I will try to attend more clubs and meetings to see what I really enjoy and what I really want to invest all my club hours into.

Throughout middle and high school I was a part of many different clubs, organizations and activities; some of which included the student government, volunteering at my local church, and refereeing for my soccer club. Although all of these clubs were instrumental in developing my academic and social foundation, none of them were culture based. Now that I’m in college I thought I’d give one a look. Since I am Ecuadorian, I figured that the Ecuadorian club seemed the most fitting. As I stepped into the room, I was warmly greeted by a welcoming committee of fellow Ecuadorians. This immediately gave me a homely feeling that intrigued me further. Some of the members of the club were very surprised to learn that I am actually Ecuadorian because I don’t look like a typical Ecuadorian. After spending just a few minutes in the room, I realized that this was a community I would like to be apart of. I have always dreamed of visiting Ecuador but have never had the chance to go there. I’m not sure if travelling with the club would be a possibility, but if so, I would definitely be interested in accompanying them. Being in a room full of people who have the same heritage as I do gave me a sense of belonging to my roots which is hard to get when you have never visited the country. I am extremely excited to become more involved on Baruch’s campus and I feel that the Ecuadorian club will provide me with a great opportunity to do just that. I haven’t actually joined the club officially yet, but it is something that I am looking forward to doing in the near future. In addition to the club, I attended a study abroad fair where I learned about the various opportunities that Baruch offers for our students to explore new areas around the globe.

For my first Baruch Club experience, I joined a club that I am very familiar with. I joined the club known as the United Sikh Association or Baruch Sikhs. I had wanted to join this club when I first attended orientation but I couldn’t find them. I wanted to join this club because I felt I would fit right in. Being Sikh is a very part of life. So I wanted to join a club where I could meet other people like me. I wanted to find a place where I could fit right in with people who had similar backgrounds like me. I first come into contact with the club at the Starbucks across the street. As I walked into Starbucks with my other classmates, I got pulled over to the side by one of the club leaders. he recognized I was Sikh by my turban and asked if I was interested in joining the club. I told him I was and Dilpreet gave me the information for the first club meeting. I went to the meeting on 9/12/17 and it was very welcoming. I had walked in a little late but I proceeded to take a seat quietly. As I listened in I learned that the club was based on the Punjabi culture and Sikh ideas. they shared similar ideas of giving charity and having cultural events such as the Bhangra Bash. After explaining the goals and ideals of the club, everyone introduced themselves. everyone was very welcoming and nice. it felt like I had already know these people for a while. we were speaking in our native language of Punjab and I connected with many people. I made a few new friends. it was a great experience for me because I didn’t know anyone who attended Baruch from my high school . This club allowed me to meet people who knew exactly where I came from and the goals I had. it was a great overall experience and I plan to be part of the club for all 4 years of my Baruch career.

Wednesday after class, Michal, Stephan, Taja and I went to Arlette Tebele’s Pop-Up Art Galler. Arlette Tebele is 23 years old and a New York Based Artist. She grew up in Brooklyn and went to FIT for college. According to her bio, she always loved to draw and paint and got most of her inspiration from the streets of Brooklyn. Her motto is “just a girl who was born to dream- minus the sleep.”
Before going into the Pop Up Gallery, I honestly did not know what to expect. I’m to the biggest fan of art, but the pictures that I saw of the gallery were so cool and I decided to go. We walked in and all I saw was a lot a lot of yellow. Yellow walls. Yellow stickers. Yellow smiley faces. And most of the paintings had some type of yellow in them. Arlette Tebele’s logo is a yellow smiley face with the younger sticking out. We were also were the only ones in the gallery at the time. There was paintings of Kanye West, Michael Jordan, and cartoons of just about everything. The gallery also included a basketball hoop and a bunch of quotes throughout the store such as, “I dream of you in colors that don’t exist” and “don’t worry baby”. I loved how she made the gallery so personal and relatable to her audience. She had this huge poster with a smiley face in it and sharpies where everyone can sign their names and kinda add to her artwork. My favorite part of the store was as soon as you walked in, on the side there was a big empty space on the wall. Starting at the top where a bunch of Polaroids of people who visited Arlette Tebele’s art gallery. We took a Polaroid, signed our names, gave to the guy to put up on the wall. I haven’t been to many pop up shows, especially not art ones and this was really interesting.

I went with Catherine, Diamond, and Rebecca to this Chinese lantern making event where we met up with Jenny and Monica in the back. I had brought dumplings so I sat through the rather long PowerPoint on the Lunar Festival and subsequent wait in relative comfort. They took a while to get started, passing out paper and staplers but then taking forever with the scissors so Diamond and Rebecca left and I felt a little antsy to leave too. I had helped run a club almost exactly like this in high school (complete with cultural PowerPoints and paper crafts) so I felt bad about wanting to leave when I knew how hard it was to put together a meeting just like this and stayed. Which was good because it was great. I made my own ugly lantern and stuck a couple stickers on it then put Catherine’s on top with the sticker paper to complete the masterpiece.

Some stranger saw me widen my eyes at his paper not-a-lantern and he put it on top without really talking to us.

His addition really made the lantern come alive.

A happy person put some more. I was just there, kind of amused by the turn of events because I had just stacked my lantern with Catherine’s out of sheer boredom but excited-girl was so excited and bouncy, saying we were going to win first place.

The lanterns that won first and second don’t matter. Look at it.

We won third. Got pocky, shared it with Catherine and stranger.

Then a huge line was formed as the leader of the club brought out the food: dumplings, pork buns, and egg rolls. I didn’t eat any though, my dumplings had been great; I was very proud of myself, maybe too proud.

This experience really brought me back to when I tried to teach teenagers how to make origami flowers or when we did hearts for white day. There was so much struggle but it was worth it in the end-being able to put it on a college application. Also the personal satisfaction and leadership skill aquired. Yeah.

Today was the study abroad fair. I went because I want to be able to know what options there are for me to go and experience new places while also learning. I visited differet booths that were set up. I talked to the people there and asked questions about the programs that they offered. One of the booths I went to was the one for F.I.T. another CUNY school. I decided to check it out because one of my best friends goes there and I wanted to talk to her about it afterwards. I saw photography option which seemed really cool. I’ve always been interested in photography and thought it could be a great opportunity to also go to India. I asked the lady if I would get credits for these classes because they were only three week courses. She said I would but i should go to the study abroad advisor to see if they are transferable. Which is something that I will do when I get the time. I also checked out The College At Brockport booth. They had a pamphlet on summer an winter programs. Which is exactly what I wanted to do. So it will probably be the program that I will focus on the most. Another booth that i checked out was the Baruch exchange program for the Dominican Republica. Similar to why I went to the F.I.T booth was because my boyfriend is Dominican and he often goes there with family. So it would be nice to go there and learn about the country through firsthand experiences. Its also during the summer so its a chance we can go at the same time and I can get to know more of his family. I also took several years of spanish in school and don’t remember any of it. So I am hoping o can learn better from people who speak the language everyday. Traveling is something I’ve always wanted to do and with these programs I can while also learning.